The typical practice of municipal refuse control is the provision of numerous collection bins or wastebaskets at street intersections and the periodic collection of the bin contents for ultimate disposal at a waste center. Such practice has been undermined to some extent by the theft of the wastebaskets, which are portable and usable by the thief, e.g., for leaf burning in the suburban communities.
One effort to overcome this problem has been the introduction of refuse containers which are not readily portable, e.g., concrete collection bins. Where intended for use as linerless, such concrete bins present difficulties to the daily collection practice effort, which must be mechanized with equipment adapted to lift the concrete bin and invert same to collect the bin contents.
A further effort to overcome the theft problem and at the same time permit manual, mechanically-unassisted daily collection, the art has seen the introduction, in non-portable collection bins, of readily removable liners which are not self-standing in the absence of the support provided by the non-portable collection bin and hence not attractive to theft. As presently known, such liners are of synthetic plastics and seat in a circular opening in the collection bin, the liners including an upper portion extending radially outwardly of the liner to seat upon the collection bin adjacent such opening therein. The liner has an upper portion of generally cylindrical outline extending to a lower portion in frustro-conical outline in turn extending to a bottom or base flat surface of rather small measure. The result is that the liner is not self-standing, but will topple when placed with such small base flat surface on a substrate without benefit of supporting structure.
While the theft problem has been substantially reduced by the last-noted development, several shortcomings still attend the current state of the art. Thus, there is a tendency for the public to use the linerless, non-portable collection bin as a refuse container, since it has the appearance of being such. Also, the presently known form of non-self-standing liners have handling disadvantage for daily collection personnel.
In addition to the problem of the theft of refuse or litter receptacles, a wire mesh basket, commonly used by municipalities, is relatively heavy and, even when empty, may weigh approximately thirty-eight pounds, thus making it more difficult for a worker to lift. Furthermore, wire baskets may be expensive, costing as much as thirty-nine dollars each. Moreover, such wire mesh baskets are aesthetically undesirable since refuse and litter therein is readily seen.